ohomen171's Journey Through Life: May 2025

Sunday, May 18, 2025

A Brilliant Russian General Forgotten By History

Profile photo for Defence Warriors Defence Warriors · Follow Guiding You About Defence and Security at Indian ArmyDec 12 What is the least known World War One fact? It was the Russians who first solved the problem of trench warfare. Trench warfare created quite a lot of stress for commanders on both sides of the war. Generals who were used to launching offensives on massive, green plains found it difficult to smash through rows of entrenched barbed wire and machine guns. Hundreds of thousands of men died because their leaders were using 19th century tactics in a 20th century war. It was only in 1916 that the problem of trench warfare was “fixed” when Alexei Brusilov, general of the Russian army was given the task of breaking through the Austrian lines to help ease up the French and British advance at the battle of the Somme. The Austrians had quite rapidly built a long strip of trench where they were waiting for the Russian attack. Not only was the trench long, but it was defended by machine guns, barbed wire and over a million men. Brusilov had studied the French and British tactics to deal with German trenches and quickly realised they were too heavily concentrated on trying to ‘punch a hole’ at a particular spot in the German lines, which allowed the enemy to know exactly where to send reinforcements and supplies to massacre waves upon waves of enemy troops. Learning from the British and French costly failures, Brusilov decided to do the exact opposite. Instead of attacking one spot over and over again, he would launch a offensive attacking everywhere so that the Austrians wouldn't know where to send reinforcements, then he would use small groups of elite soldiers to attack weak points in the Austro-Hungarian trench lines and blow open holes for the rest of the army to advance into. Of course, Brusilov needed millions of soldiers to make this attack successful, which he was given. On 4 June 1916, the Russians opened the offensive with an accurate but brief artillery barrage against the Austro-Hungarian lines before sending over nearly 573,000 soldiers attacking all across the Austrian front line. The attack worked so well that only 4 days after the official offensive had started, the Austrians were in full retreat and the Russians had taken over 200,000 prisoners within the first couple of days. However, because Brusilov had commanded his troops to be all over the front and not in one certain area, supply lines became severely over extended to the point that the offensive was put on a halt. But by then Brusilov had accomplished every single goal his offensive was meant to muster, German soldiers were moved from the Somme and sent to the eastern front leaving fewer soldiers to deal with for the Western allies, the Austro-Hungarian army was crippled and had to rely on Germany for the rest of the war and Romania joined the war on the side of the allies. Brusilov’s tactics were copied by both Allied and central power commanders who quickly realised how extremely efficient they were in comparison to human wave tactics. The Brusilov style of offensive were especially used by the Germans who utilised stormtroopers to create holes in the enemy lines, and later again in WWII when Brusilov breakthrough tactics were used in Blitzkrieg offensives across Europe. After the war Brusilov, in spite of his conservative background, joined the Red army in the Russian civil war - training Soviet soldiers to become cavalry men, a step down from being the commander of the army. He died in Moscow in 1926 from congestive heart failure. His body rests in the Bogoroditse-Smolensky Monastery where it has not been disturbed. Photo: a coloured picture of Brusilov. 150.6K views View 2,112 upvotes View 32 shares